The hopes and fears... are met in thee tonight

O little town of Bethlehem
How still we see thee lie
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight

            I’ve had that hymn in my head all Advent-long and when something is stuck up there I suspect it is a good thing to investigate why, and when I investigated why I discovered a couple of things that were speaking to me that might also be speaking to you this Christmas.

            The first regards this town—this Bethlehem. It’s quiet. “How still we see thee lie.” And yet it’s also full of people, travelers, strangers, people required to check in with the governmental authorities. It’s a quiet town under the thumb of the empire.

“Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.”

The natural world does its thing; the stars above keep shining, things are as they always are. It might have been a night in Hallock, though perhaps we’re much too booming and trendy a metropolis nowadays to really capture it. Bethlehem was the original hipster town; it was quiet and cool before it was cool to be quiet.

Further up! Further in!

Isaiah 55:1-13

            One week on the book of Isaiah; that’s not remotely fair, but then again if your only exposure to the Bible is what I preach on Sunday mornings it’s going to be hard to get the whole picture. So, anyway, one reading from Isaiah to capture all of Isaiah is silly.

Firstly, you may not know this, but the book of Isaiah is the work of at least three authors from three different time period. We know this because chapters 1-39 cover the prophet, Isaiah, who lived in the 8^th century BC; chapters 40-55 tell us that Jerusalem has already been destroyed and take place either during the exile or just after, meaning we are talking about the 6^th century BC, and finally chapters 56-66 are written after the exile. Rather than taking away from the book of Isaiah, this gives it some arc. The book shows a movement of history over the course of centuries, and it holds a common theme, moving inexorably toward Jesus. It is for that reason that Isaiah has been called the fifth Gospel. Isaiah couldn’t have known about Jesus, but they anticipated something they couldn’t quite put their fingers on—something that turned out to be a baby born in a manger.

So, with that context in mind, it’s important to note that our reading from Isaiah 55 is the end of 2^nd Isaiah. It’s the conclusion of Book II if you want to think about this like Lord of the Rings or The Last Jedi or something; it’s the finale of the exile. Israel is coming home. But, as many of you know, you can never really come home again; at least home isn’t what it was before. In Israel’s case, the temple has been destroyed; the people residing in the land worship strange gods; their faith has been tested in exile and they have come back to the “Holy Land” with an understanding that God is no longer housed in a particular place. Their God went with them into the wilderness, so what does it look like for God to return home?

It’s easy to get complacent at home. Familiarity breeds complacency. We’ve all had this experience: We face a new thing in life—it’s scary; it’s stressful—and we can’t wait until it comes to some resolution. It might be a new job, a new project, a new business, a new child, or simply a new normal. We spend so much time stressing over the unfamiliarity of the situation, and often we discover some strength we didn’t know we had in the process of overcoming those new obstacles. The problem often comes in the new normal, because, having faced the obstacles of the past, we lose our edge.

Not Change, Death and Resurrection

Ezekiel 37:1-14

            It is extremely normal to be afraid of death, and not just physical death. It is natural to fear the death of things, the death of ideals, the death of the past. Ezekiel and the valley of the dry bones is a response to all of this. What better sign of death than dry bones—and this is a valley filled with them! It makes a person wonder: How did they die? Some brutal war, famine, genocide… For me, it brings to mind pictures from Auschwitz or from the genocide in Rwanda. Bones upon bones. Bodies upon bodies.

            That’s a heavy way to start on a Christmas program Sunday, but I think it’s important that we don’t too quickly romanticize this story. It’s important not apart from Christmas but because of it. I don’t want to jump ahead straight to the resolution; I want to sit for a moment in the silence of the valley of dry bones, because that feels like Advent to me—because in the dry bones we have whispers of resurrection.

            God does nothing apart from death. This is where God and the rest of us are profoundly different. We have a strong desire to keep things alive. We remember what was good, and we recognize that good thing (or good person) for what it was, and so we, quite logically, put that good thing on life support and try to keep it going and going and going both to honor the good thing that once was and to hope that that good thing may one day come back again.

            “I remember when the church was full on Sundays,” we say with a hint of sadness.

            “I remember when we had so many people in town…”

            “I remember when so-and-so was here, doing such-and-such a thing. It will never be the same as when they were here.”

            I suspect all of these things are true. I hear them all the time. We need to say a couple things about those things from the past. One is that it’s true, we absolute can’t make things to the same; but the second thing we must do is admit that the past was great but the past is those dry bones. Trying to keep it alive is fruitless. Keeping it on life support drains us, and it’s ultimately futile. It’s like telling somebody in the nursing home who has lost their mobility that if they just started playing basketball in the mornings—because hey, it works for me!—they’ll get stronger. It pains us to admit that some goals have to change, some things die. And that’s either the end of the world or it isn’t; that’s the real question for us: Is death the end of the world or not?

You need to think of a better question

Daniel 3

One of the wisest things I’ve ever heard was from a teacher of mine who was asked a question in class. The actual question doesn’t matter—I don’t remember it was at least—but he answered the question by saying, “Sir, you are not asking the right question. You need to think of a better question.”

I can’t begin to count how many times I’ve wanted to say that to a person. I mean, on the one hand you want people to be vulnerable and ask anything so those of us who teach like to say, “There are no stupid questions,” but that’s really an invitation to those who are shy or afraid to ask what they want to ask. The truth is that there are lots of stupid questions. Questions that are designed to show the correct-ness of the person asking it are bad questions; questions that are personal attacks are bad questions; questions asked to mock and belittle are bad questions. There are many cases where the best answer is: Think some more and come back with a better question.

            I thought of this today because the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego is really the story of Nebuchadnezzar asking bad questions. He starts out by making a golden statue to worship; it’s a statue of him, by the way, in case you were wondering. The statue is the first example of Nebuchadnezzar asking the wrong question, because the kind of person who makes a giant golden statue of himself has to be asking a question like, “How do I demonstrate that I am powerful?”

If Nebuchadnezzar asked a different question—a better question—something along the lines of, “From where does my power come?” he would have likely a gone a different path. Most likely he instead tempted by the question, “How do I get more power?” which is the most tempting of all questions, but it also not the best question when it comes to living a good life, especially a life of faith.

            Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego show why. Being good Jews and knowing the idolatry is a big no-no in God’s eyes, they refuse to bow to the giant statue. Instead of asking, “How can we get power?” they are asking, “From where does true power come?” and they realize true power cannot come from Nebuchadnezzar. He’s just a man—a king, sure—but just a man. True power empowers not just the person in power but all people; it doesn’t seek power for its own ends; true power comes from God, because God is not in it for himself, like Nebuchadnezzar—and many politicians. They can’t worship this golden statue because it isn’t true. But that’s not the interesting thing; the interesting thing is that all the people in the land know this, right? Everybody knows that leaders who make statues and require loyalty oaths and whatnot do so not because they have a lot of power but because they feel vulnerable; the question is whether we pretend and give it to them, or stand up for what is actually true.

Jeremiah 29:11 won't save us

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-14

            Do you know what is the most popular biblical verse among millennials? John 3:16? Nope. The 23^rd Psalm? Nuh uh. Genesis 1:1, John 1:1, Philippians 4:13, Romans 8:28, Psalm 46:1, Hebrews 11:1? Not. A. One. Of. Them.

            The most popular verse among millennials is Jeremiah 29:11 and it isn’t that close. “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” It sounds so pleasant, so promising. It’s exactly what we want to hear. It’s also badly misused.

            Let’s keep reading starting with Jeremiah 29:12: “Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.”

            If you assume that everything is about you, then it’s easy enough to start thinking that you have been sent into exile proverbially; that you are being gathered in by God so you’re your fortunes will be restored—whatever that means. The problem is that God is not speaking metaphorically here because God is not speaking to us—at least that’s not the clearest understanding of this passage. He is speaking to Israel. I’m guessing you might hear this differently when you know it’s addressed to Israel and not to you: “I know the plans I have for you… plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” The most legitimate gripe leveled against millennials is that we make everything about us. I think that can be unfair, but in this case we are guilty; this scripture is not about us. Period.

Giving, Losing, Worrying, and Making the World a Little Better

Luke 12:13-21

I have to admit when I first read the scripture this week for Harvest Festival I turned skyward, maybe shook my fist a little, and said, “Whatchu doin’ to me?” Can’t I just have duckies and bunnies just one Sunday—on Harvest Sunday, pretty please? Why is the Bible filled with so much law?

            We had a rough start to the week in our house. Somebody stole my identity and managed to run our accounts into the ground and messed with our banking and did all sorts of damage. I’m still sorting it out. Anything with money can be just anxiety-producing, can’t it? I actually awoke in the middle of the night Tuesday and couldn’t get back to sleep because I had the sudden, paranoid fear that the person I had talked to the night before wasn’t actually who I thought it was. This is the kind of thing this does to you; like a break-in or a theft or worse.

            That anxiety stuck with me a good portion of this week.

            Then, Natalie and I went to see my grandma for her 100^th birthday on the last couple days. Let me tell you what you don’t worry about at 100 years old: Much. You don’t worry about much. My grandma had a stroke earlier this year and it shows. She isn’t as aware as before, but she is still there when you’re up close and when she has the time to figure out who you are. It’s like she had her own small bubble and when a person entered it she just lit up. When nobody was in the bubble she just sat there peaceably, just soaking in the party. I had worries—worries about our finances generally with a lot up in the air for our family at the moment, worries about a funeral back here without me, which is silly because I knew Kate would do fine; I had stress about today’s services, about the Thanksgiving service tonight. Today is a tank-emptying kind of day for me, which means I’m also tempted to worry that I’ll probably get sick for Thanksgiving.

            Do any of you ever do this to yourselves?

What is justice, really?

Amos 1:1-2, 5:14-15, 21-24
 

            Amos is a prophet who is well-known for talking about justice. “Let justice roll down like waters,” he says. I imagine in the pre-Jesus Jewish world this was something you would put on a bumper sticker—you know, stick it to the butt of your camel and show everybody what you stand for. But this, like so many words and phrases that means something to us—justice, righteousness, those kinds of things—are loaded words. Is our idea of justice anything like Amos’ justice? Like God’s justice?

            Everybody is “for” justice, right? Nobody is going to say, “I like injustice more than justice.” But once we get past the initial polling of whether we like justice or not there is the difficult question of defining what justice is. Is it retributive justice? An eye for an eye? Is it a fair sentence for a crime? Is it the bad guys getting karma? Is it restoring victims? What is it?

            See, I don’t really like preaching on justice because I think it’s too easy for all of us to hear what we want to hear. If you’re of a liberal persuasion you may hear justice and think “social justice”—equality, empowerment, all that—and if you’re of a conservative you might hear justice and think “just desserts”—you get back what you deserve, what you earn, what you worked for. God’s justice, according to the Bible, seems like both those views and neither at the same time. In order to understand God’s justice we need to understand the law and where better to look for the law than with Ten Commandments.

Searching for Silence

1 Kings 19:1-18

There was a great mountain-shattering wind… but God was not in the wind.

            There was an earthquake, fearsome-shaking… but God was not in the earthquake.

            There was a fire, a blazing inferno, all-consuming, destroying… but God was not in the earthquake.

            Then, lastly, finally, there was the sound of… silence. What is that sound exactly?

            The Hebrew says Qol demamah daqah—literally a voice of small silence. I think I like the Common English Bible’s translation best: “After the fire, there was a sound. Thin. Quiet.”

            Whatever it is, it is contrasted to the elemental forces named before. It makes sense for God to come in the wind, the earthquake, or the fire; we’ve seen God come in all of those forces to Abraham and Jacob and Moses and to Israel in its wandering. We know God comes with a bang, but what’s more surprising is that God comes in “thin quiet.”

            If you’re talking you won’t hear it. If you’re not listening closely it will pass you by. You’ll become convinced that God never speaks, but how could you hear the voice of God with all this noise in your life?

Something old, something new: Five hundred years of being Lutheran

Romans 1:16-17 

Five hundred years ago this Tuesday, Martin Luther nailed his “95 Theses” to the door of the castle church at Wittenberg. Five hundred years ago. America had just been “discovered” by Columbus. Minnesota was home to the Chippewa and the Lakota and its population of Caucasian Europeans was exactly zero, which means there was, believe or not, no lutefisk or lefse or disappointing sports teams here. Five hundred years ago it would still be another hundred years before the first pilgrim colony in America. Five hundred years ago is a LONG time ago.

            But five hundred years is nothing compared to the time between Martin Luther and Jesus. Fifteen hundred years. It’s nothing compared to the time between Jesus and Moses, between Moses and Adam and Eve, between Adam and Eve and the creation of the world. It’s nothing.

            Five hundred years is impossibly long and incredibly short all at the same time. So we need a little perspective here: The Lutheran church has been around a long time… and also not very long at all.

            This comes out in funny ways in our traditions. Some traditions, like the liturgy, like Holy Communion and Baptism, date from the time of Jesus. Some things we do are truly ancient. Other things, like our music we play, or our church architecture, or our governance structures, what is called our “polity,” have constantly evolved over the years. Just ask a Lutheran to tell you about the “good old hymns” and you’ll find out exactly how vague that concept is. Many of the good old hymns that people love were written in the 20^th century—Just a Closer Walk With Thee, How Great Thou Art, The Old Rugged Cross, In the Garden to name a few—all written since 1900. Meanwhile, many of the songs that are called “contemporary,” which by definition suggests they are up-to-date, songs like “Here I am, Lord” and “Shout to the Lord” for example, are thirty to forty years old. Kumbaya is nearly one hundred years old. Even Beautiful Savior, written in the 19^th century, and Amazing Grace, in the last part of the 18^th century, came into existence since the founding of America, which is itself a very young country.

All of this is to say that we are a hodgepodge of the ancient and the modern. The heart of our church is not those trappings—not the songs we sing, which will be different in fifty years; not the church architecture which goes through phases—but rather the power of the Gospel. As Paul says in our Romans reading, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” In Paul’s day the big new movement was a church not only for Jews but also for Greeks. Paul helped take the church from Judaism and bring it to the Gentile world. Fifteen hundred years later, Luther would take the church out of the halls of the Catholic priesthood and make it accessible to the common people.

God Chooses Nobodies

1 Samuel 16:1-13

            Four years ago when I preached on this text from 1 Samuel, on the subject of electing leaders, I began by pointing out a survey at the time that Congress’ approval rating was a whopping 10%. Believe it or not, things have improved in the last four years! Today, 13% of Americans approve of Congress; this in spite of the fact that by all appearances they’ve haven’t actually done anything in those intervening four years.

            Still, 13% approval is pretty terrible, so I think the point I was making four years ago stands today: We make terrible choices when it comes to electing people. Now, we can say that all the choices are bad, which may be true however uninspiring. We can point to local and regional leadership that is much better than our national leaders. This is more hopeful. However, at the end of the day, most of us take issue with the way most leaders lead us most of the time.

            Thank goodness God doesn’t elect democratically. God elects with a backwards kind of politics. He elects the shepherd boy. The youngest. The least mature. The least wise to the ways of the world. The one we choose last. That’s who God chooses first.

            Human beings look on the outside, but God looks on the heart, says God in verse 7.

Trust in children? Trust in parents? No, trust in God.

1 Samuel 3:1-21

Eli is not a particularly well-known biblical character, and I’m not going to say he should be. But Samuel is. He has two books of the Bible named after him (1 and 2 Samuel). These are books that tell the story of David, but they are not named after David; they tell the stories of Saul and Hannah and Bathsheba and others, but they are not named after them either. They are named after Samuel. Samuel is a big deal. So, today’s reading introduces us to Samuel by way of Eli, so we’re going to talk about both.

Samuel is a child—a young boy—and he is ministering to the Lord under Eli. A bit of needed context here: Samuel’s mother, Hannah, dedicates him to God from the time he is born because she had been unable to have a child and Samuel is her reward, whom she returns to the Lord by sending him into ministry. Samuel has spent his entire life next to Eli. Yet, when the voice of God comes to Samuel we have this odd report in verse 7 that “Samuel did not know the Lord.” It is not until Eli realizes what is going on and tells Samuel to listen that perhaps God is calling to him that Samuel learns what is going on. Then there is the message. This is where things get uncomfortable as a parent, a pastor—really anybody who oversees children. The message God gives to Samuel is that Eli is about to be punished. He’s about to lose his priesthood, his legacy, and his life.

That’s the message Samuel is supposed to bring to Eli.

Complaints are a mark of... faith?

Exodus 16:1-18

            A lot happens between last week’s story of Moses and the burning bush and today’s reading: Plagues descend on Egypt; Moses and Aaron stand before Pharaoh again and again, saying “Let my people go;” eventually, the plagues crescendo into the death of the firstborn and Pharaoh gives in, albeit momentarily; Israel escapes from Egypt, the Red Sea parts and Pharaoh’s army, following after them, are overwhelmed by the crashing waters; and finally the Israelites begin to wander in the wilderness.

            So it is that the complainers start to arise… again and again and again. You have to remember: Moses just saved this people from slavery; it was through Moses that God sent plagues on the land, and it is through God that their own children were spared while the Egyptian children were not. It was by the hand of God, working through Moses, that the people walked through the Red Sea on dry land. If ever there were a people in the history of the world who should be grateful it should be Israel; it would have to be Israel.

            Yet, according to Exodus 16, on the fifteenth day of the second month Israel cried out: "If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger."

            We all know that hunger does irrational things to people; it makes them angry; and they do have a point in a way. Death is death—whether at the hands of Pharaoh, or free but starving in the desert, death is death. On the one hand it has only been forty-three days since God parted the Red Sea; you would think this would make them a people who would trust completely; you would think that since God got them this far they would trust even further still. On the other hand, maybe they did trust. Maybe they trusted that food would come on the third day and the fifth day; maybe they held out hope until the tenth and the fifteenth and the twentieth. Come to think of it, it’s kind of remarkable it is the middle of the second month—40-odd days since escaping the slavery of Pharaoh—before the people rose up in complaint. They are human after all.

            You see, if you’re thinking the message here is about Israel’s faithlessness, think again. Raising one’s voice in complaint, begging even, is not the opposite of being faithful, or at least if it is God gives no indication that this is the case. God only commends them; suggests, even that this complaining is a mark of faith, and not a blemish.

Is everything a joke to you? Only the things that matter.

Exodus 2:23-25, 3:1-15, 4:10-17

            Comedy is hard, like really hard. I know because I say jokes in public on occasion. Now, given I say jokes in a church where people aren’t sure if it’s appropriate to laugh and I’m not exactly Jimmy Kimmel, or Robin Williams, or Bob Hope (I think I got the generations covered there). There are some obvious differences in expectations anyway; most of you don’t come to church specifically to laugh, which is all well and good. Laughter is often seen as the opposite of taking something seriously. However, I tend to think that humor and piety or faithfulness are much more closely related than we give them credit. Sometimes we need to laugh in order to see what is true. Worship should often be a place of laughter, not because we’re pretending everything is alright but because we know it’s not and we need that freeing joy of things that are just plain funny. One of my favorite movie quotes is a line from V for Vendetta where the heroine Evey asks the comedian Deitrich, “Is everything a joke to you?” And he answers, “Only the things that matter.” And I think there’s something profoundly true in that.

It is very possible to laugh and take things seriously at the same time. Most of us are not children; we can do both! But because we tend to set some times aside for humor and other times aside for serious worship we tend to have our eyes closed to the ways that God uses humor to tell us something. Did you catch what was funny about our reading of the day today? Maybe not. If we’re expecting dour seriousness that’s what we get, and sometimes biblical humor is, you know, biblical. It’s old and dated and not all that funny. But some things are just funny no matter what. Moses’ speech in Exodus 4 is the perfect example.

Now, when I read this speech as the Reading of the Day a few minutes ago I read it with the reverence that you expect from a reading during Sunday morning worship. I did this because I didn’t want to confuse you and because I like keeping my job, but now I’m going to read it how I think it should be read, but in order to do so I’m going to have to change the language a little—make it feel a bit modern. The setting I imagine here is God trying to put Moses to bed, because that’s a situation that speaks deep to my heart these days for some reason. If you listen for it, I think you’ll hear why.

Exodus 4:10-17.

Moses: “O Lord, I have never been eloquent either heretofore or even now that you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech… and of tongue.”

God: <open-mouthed stare> (I don’t know what it looks like for God to stare open-mouthed at somebody but I’m pretty sure that’s what happened here… you know, the look you give when somebody says something so foolish that you’re trying to figure out if they’re being intentionally idiotic or if they really just don’t get it.) Anyway, God says: “I’ll be doing the speaking, ya dummy. Plus, mmm, don’t know how to break this to you... but that speech you just made about not being able to speak sounded like something straight out of Shakespeare. You’ll be fine.”

Moses: “But I don’t want to!” (Full tantrum mode now)

God: “OK, have it your way. Your brother, Aaron, speaks. So, here’s how this is going to go: I’m going to put words in your mouths. You’ll speak to Aaron. Aaron will speak to the people. I mean, basically all you’re going to have to say is “Let my people go!” anyway. Now, Moses, take this staff; it’s going to come in handy…”

I feel like I should mention at this time that it’s sort of a pet peeve of mine when people are listing all the biblical characters that God uses unexpectedly they list lepers and children and women, who had no standing in society, and then inevitably they list Moses and say God used him in spite of his speech impediment. Moses was just being a toddler. That was his impediment; he was a grown-up cry-baby.

That changes the whole tenor of the story, doesn’t it? No longer is Moses this perfect biblical character; he’s sort of just like you and me—dragging his feet, kicking and screaming, from doing what God expects him to do. It’s funny because it’s true and because we recognize that in ourselves, and those of us with toddlers or teenagers recognize it immediately.

The humor doesn’t lessen from the message at all as far as I’m concerned. It just reminds us the kinds of dummies that God uses; so that even when we feel like we’re pretty much the worst of all sinners we should remember that God used a guy like Moses who went in full cry-baby mode when God asked him to save his people from slavery. If God uses Moses, then any of us are free game. So was Jonah, who was the very worst prophet, who had by far the most success. That’s an entire book of the Bible I believe is written as satire—as one big joke.

I guess what I want to say with the burning bush as the background is that it’s OK to read these passages as humorous. You have permission to laugh. A lot of permission. And I’m not just saying that so you humor me with the occasional chortle when I say something I imagine might be funny; I say it because there is something good and true in humor. And while the church might not be the primary place you go to have a laugh I do think we should laugh more; not because we aren’t taking this seriously but because we know it matters and things that matter are often funny.

I can’t tell you how many times death and humor are intertwined; how many times the funniest stories are told around the time of death. Humor disarms us, helps us from taking ourselves too seriously, and it reminds us what really matters. I get all this from Moses, because I recognize in Moses the same unwillingness I sometimes feel—and I’m guessing you feel it too—to step up and do anything. It’s humorous because I know it’s true. I know it’s easier to do nothing—to pretend like everything’s great in Egypt; to not speak up.

Somehow, humor makes getting over that hump easier, and that’s no mistake, because God gave us laughter for exactly this purpose: To do God’s will for a world that needs it. That sounds somber, but it’s a holy calling and holy callings are funny, because we are still just silly little human beings trying to do God’s will. Nothing is funnier than that. Nothing is more humorous than a human being trying to be like God. But thanks be to God, because he calls and uses us all the same; no matter how silly and stupid and Moses-like we are. It’s funny because it’s true.

The hero that wasn't: Why the Jacob story isn't about Jacob

Genesis 27:1-3, 15-23; 28:10-17

            God works through cheaters and scoundrels and all the sort that don’t do things right. Of course, those aren’t the only kinds of people God uses but since we are talking about Jacob… the thoughts that come to mind are: stubborn; cheater; thief of his brother’s birthright; fought with an angel; wasn’t exactly repentant about any of this.

            I want to start by saying this: This isn’t a story telling us to be like Jacob. Most stories in the Bible aren’t fables telling us to be like the heroes; most stories, like this one, are about who God is and what God does and not what are we supposed to do. In this case, God chooses to promote this nation, Israel. Jacob becomes Israel later in life—another of those biblical name changes. Israel is God’s chosen people. God’s chosen people can trace their history to a cheating liar that stole a birthright and, apparently, that’s not all a bad thing.

It could have been Esau. Volumes have been written on why God chose Jacob over Esau; they say that Jacob was more cunning, cleverer, he had the right heart, or whatever that means. At the end of the day, God chose a cheater. Jacob—the name—literally meant “he cheats.”

            So, we could also say that this is about God choosing somebody and transforming him. Perhaps God takes all the Jacobs and turns them into Israels. This feels closer to being true but still not the point. Not every Jacob turns into an Israel. And this story still is not about Jacob. It’s true that God uses good people and bad people—after all, he used Saul, the murderer; Jonah, the pathetic prophet; and also widows and children and all sorts of people whose powerlessness is their defining characteristic. God tends to use the people who we would least expect, both good and bad. But the main point is that God uses Jacob because Jacob is in the right place at the right time. Our world is messy, and God seems to do the best he can with the mess we’ve made.

            This isn’t about Jacob; it is about God’s plan, which is a plan for nations. Through Jesus, it becomes a plan for all people. The plan, however, is not a smooth road. The danger in making every biblical story about the hero is that we imagine that God’s plan for history is to make all of us into heroes. Turn on the news and you know this isn’t exactly true. Instead of a smooth road, God’s plan is to take the bumpy road of life and have it lead somewhere meaningful. It’s a plan that even when we are sent in the wrong direction and even when we crash and burn—even, especially, when we lose something that can’t be fixed—God is there to pick up the pieces.

God rested: A Rally Sunday mini-sermon

Genesis 1-2:4a

Why does God rest?

            It seems like a silly thing for the God of the universe to do. God is infinite. God created it all… spoke and there it was. God is perfectly energetic. Clearly, God doesn’t need to rest. Since God is the utmost, the ultimate, the holiest—the outer perfection toward which humanity is striving, we might assume that God is also a perfect worker, a perfect controller of destinies, a perfect worker bee…

            But God rested.

            God didn’t need to rest. It’s not like God gets tired. It’s not like God couldn’t do whatever God pleased to meddle with creation. It’s not like God didn’t have plenty of work to do. And yet… on the seventh day God rested.

            God spent six days speaking things into existence, and it could be six days or years or six billion years—doesn’t matter in the slightest—but it does matter that God rested. God took his foot off the accelerator and said, “Here. Why don’t you take a drive?”

            That’s either the most brilliant or the most dumbfounding moment in history. God let us decide things for ourselves.

            Imagine a world where God decided not to stop and not to rest; a world where God kept things completely under control. We might still be here… but freedom? There would be none of it. Pain and suffering? No, not that either. But neither would there be love or joy. Contentment, perhaps, but joy? Nah, you need freedom for joy. You need sorrow for joy. If God never rested then there would be none of that. Life would be about us being the worker bees in turn—serving God, not knowing a thing else. Instead, we were set loose with this terrible, wonderful thing called freedom, and here we are. God rested because God loved us enough to let us mess everything up.

            That is parenting, really. And it’s rough. But God did it first.

            So, today is Rally Sunday and the service is packed full of so much stuff I’m not going to say much today. I’m going to give it a rest. I figure if it’s good enough for the God of the universe it’s good enough for me. Some of you may need a rest, too. You may feel like there’s no time for it, especially now that the fall is here. Others of you may rest too much and you might need a kick in the pants, but I’m not talking to you. Most of you need more rest than you give yourselves. If it was good enough for God it is good enough for you.

            So, as we get into the busy-ness of everything, today I just want to sit with the creation story and ponder what it means that God took a break. Then, I’m going to do the same.

Living on the side of the coin

Matthew 12:1-8

            One day, Jesus and the disciples were walking the wheat fields on a Saturday—Sabbath-day in the Jewish world. You probably know the story. They’re hungry so they grab a few grains to eat, infamously breaking that commandment of honoring the Sabbath day by keeping it free from work. The eating is not the problem; the plucking, however, is strictly forbidden. They also might be breaking the stealing commandment as well, since we have no reason to believe this was a field any of them farmed, but putting that aside let’s focus on the Sabbath-violation because that’s what the Pharisees are most concerned about anyway.

            They have Jesus dead to rights. This is a clear violation of the law. More to the point, no holy person—if that’s what Jesus really is—would allow this kind of sacrilege under his sight. It’s an affront to their religion; they might as well be Roman pagans.

            This sets the stage for a conversation that we are still having today. You might not realize it, but this debate between the Pharisees and Jesus is happening in Christianity in the modern world every single day. It is scripture like this around which many of the biggest disagreements between Christians are staged, because it is scripture like this that calls into question the law and the law is a big deal for Christians.

            Here’s what I mean: Imagine a scenario where Jesus agrees with the Pharisees. He says, “Yep. No plucking grain on the Sabbath. You are no longer my disciples. You can’t be disciples because my disciples are perfect followers of the law.”

            Imagine what that would mean. It would mean that we—today—would have no choice but to be orthodox followers of the law if we were to call ourselves Christian. It would mean that the Christian faith was only about making good choices, being good people, following the prescriptions set forth by the law—found in our Bible—and that would be it. End of story. Honor the Sabbath. Period. No excuses. No lake homes. No sports. Nothing. No doing homework. No turning on the TV to watch football. To do any of that would be anti-Christian.

            Imagine a world where Jesus took the law to its fullest conclusion, as he does with the rich man who comes to him and tells him how holy he is—to whom Jesus says, “Give it all away”—and imagine that world without the follow-up, “For mortals it is impossible but for God all things are possible.” This would be an easier faith. It would be about absolute devotion. Christianity would be like Hassidic Judaism or Orthodox Islam. For some, Christianity is exactly like this, even if the devotees of this kind of Christianity often seem to be the biggest hypocrites.

            But for most of us we have, whether we realize it or not, sat with scripture like the one today and begun to ask the question, “What is the purpose of the law?” Is it to make us holy? There are a lot of people who would say “Yes” to that question. They are Christians, Jews, Muslims—some people of all faiths believe this. For them it is about devotion, submission, complete observance. Others have taken scripture like this and said, “It’s a free-for-all! Look, Jesus says there are no rules!” So we have relativists who use the parts of the Bible they find palatable, but as with so many things if you go around the circle of belief far enough you end up in the same place. Relativists, too, tend to judge their worthiness based on how faithful they are to a cause, whatever that cause may be, and so whether you are a right-wing fundamentalist, who claims the ultimate authority of the law, or a left-wing fundamentalist, who claims there is no law, you tend to find yourself in the same place: Justifying yourself by your observance of principles.

            So many people find themselves on one side of the coin or the other, but Jesus—like Jesus always seems to do—straddles that tiny grooved notch between the sides of the coin. Jesus seems to be the only one not at all interested in the things we are doing in and of themselves but instead he turns around and asks the Pharisees (and us along with them), “Why are you doing what you are doing?”

            Plucking grains on the Sabbath in itself could be good or bad. If it’s about your own selfish hungers, if it’s because you planned poorly or because you don’t care about stupid traditions, then it’s a real problem; but if it’s because you’re feeding somebody in need, if it’s because your love of God and the people around you trumps your love of yourself then by all means break the stinking law because the law exists for God, not God for the law. This is a radical statement. Have you thought about this? The law exists for God, not God for the law, which means in every point of the law we are to ask ourselves “Am I observing this law for God or to feel better about myself?” And if it’s the latter then we are condemned even by following the law!

            So, this gets really interesting for us today, because just about every contentious issue we face as Christians exists on this continuum of law and gospel that comes out of scripture like this. And it’s not a free-for-all. We can’t do anything we want, but Jesus does change the rules. The question we face is the same one Jesus implies to the Pharisees: “Why are doing what you are doing?” That might be the biggest question for any Christian to answer. “Why are you doing what you are doing?”

            But the thing about that question is that it’s a personal question. It’s for you and God. Too often our debates in Christian circles become about other people. We like to imagine we have God’s boundaries all figured out, so other people need to get themselves inside the boundaries, but more often our desire for others to get into the box of the law has more to do with us than it has to do with them. How often when somebody talks about sin do we imagine the way we most often sin and then apply it to others?

I’ll give you an example. Some of you may recall the story of the Prodigal Son. Here’s the Cliff notes version: Father gives Son his share of the property, he goes away and squanders it, he returns and the father welcomes him home, and the brother of the Prodigal Son gets his underpants all in a bunch. I want to call attention to the blunt, stupid response of the elder son who gets stark, raving mad at his father for throwing his brother a party—that prodigal son who went away and squandered all his share of the family fortune. The elder son says, “When this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you [threw him a party]” (Luke 15:30). This seems like a valid criticism, except nowhere anywhere in the story does it say the prodigal son did anything with prostitutes or had any sexual endeavors whatsoever. The elder son is projecting his own sinful desires on the brother. He is projecting what he would have done on his brother, because he is assuming his brother’s sin is the same as his own. His brother did mess up but his vices were different. When we assume we know how others sin we are usually only projecting our own sin.

There’s one more example of this that came to mind for me. There’s a cartoon that goes around Facebook in pastors’ circles every once in awhile. I assume it’s only in pastor’s circles because, let’s face it, most of you don’t share pastor-related memes on Facebook because most of you have a life. Anyway, this cartoon has a pastor in the pulpit preaching on the woman at the well, who you might recall is called a “sinful” woman according to scripture, and the pastor says, “And we all know what her sin was…” And in the pews are several men thinking, “Adultery… prostitution… sexual indiscretion...” And then there’s a woman in the back thinking, “Wanting to kill all the men who assume a woman’s sin has to be something to do with sex.”

It’s funny but it’s true. We love to assume sin on other people. Instead, we need to turn again as Jesus would have the Pharisees turn and look inside ourselves and ask “Why am I doing what I am doing?” Not “Why are they doing what they are doing?” It starts, and ends, with me. It’s a lot easier to tell other people about their own shortcomings than it is to deal with your own, and it’s easier still when you become confident in your own standing before God to tell other people that they should be practicing their beliefs just like you. God doesn’t call each of us to be the same. We are called to different things in life and we are called differently to be followers of Christ. To assume otherwise is foolish and it leads to thinking that, “Well, probably only a few people like me will be in heaven.” That, my friends, is blasphemy and its own special kind of sin.

I know because Jesus died so we can forget about nonsense like that. Jesus died so that this law-business is more than wisdom given or taken at a whim, but so that all it is null and void in the face of the grace of the cross and the empty tomb.

            Because of Jesus’ death we are free to live a life worthy of the Gospel, not confined to living a life in worry of the law. We are Easter people; not Pharisees; which means we live on the side of the coin. Not trumpeting the law because we see the sin in others; not saying “Anything goes!” and everything is true; but instead clinging to Jesus as the one way, even as we see Christ in all the unexpected places doing all the unexpected things, even breaking the law. It’s easier to live on one side of the coin or the other, but the one nice thing about living in that challenging place between the law and the gospel is that you have Jesus on your side. And that’s a pretty good thing to have.

Communion on a Sunday with no Communion

1 Corinthians 11:17-34

So, no communion today. It’s a fourth Sunday of the month. Hence, the great irony of preaching on communion with no communion following two Sundays of preaching on Baptism with no baptisms. This got me thinking…

Nothing is so important for the practice of the church than the Lord’s Supper. I think that’s mostly true—at the very least, nothing that is regularly done in the life of worship is more important. You could say baptism is even more central but we are baptized once. Communion allows us the regular practice of receiving Jesus intimately, physically. “For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”

But communion is also a difficult thing to wrap our heads around. It wasn’t that long ago—and in some places even to today—that we practiced communion once a year, maybe twice. In the days where pastors and preachers would travel by horse and buggy communion practice became very occasional. In some churches it would be years between communion celebrations. Because of this, communion took on a different kind of gravitas. It was something special, occasional, rare. Jesus, however, gave us only one instruction about how often to do communion: “Do this as often as you drink of it. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes,” he said.

That could be interpreted a number of ways. So, too, can the bit about preparation for the Lord’s Supper. Paul’s letter to 1 Corinthians is pretty clear that we are to “discern the body” of Christ or risk judgment on ourselves, but what does that mean? Do we have to reach a certain level of worthiness in God’s eyes to receive communion? Do we need to have a certain level of understanding? If so, I’m a little concerned, because I’ve done plenty of first communion classes and I can tell you that what we talk about then doesn’t stick much between then and when we talk about communion in Confirmation. If it doesn’t stick then I don’t have a lot of hope that it sticks beyond that either. Should we institute a test before receiving communion where all of you come forward and answer the question, “What does the Lord’s Supper mean to me?”

You can see what I mean. There is legitimate fear around communion. It’s not just “Am I worthy?” but also “Will I mess it up?” Will I drop the bread/wafer? Will I spill the wine? Will I accidentally eat the wafer on an intinction Sunday and stare, wide-eyed at the wine that I was supposed to dip that wafer in? We’ve all been there.

A new day--What baptism means to me

Romans 6:1-11

Baptism is daily dying and rising.

I don’t remember the first time I heard that but I guarantee that I, like maybe some of you, was surprised to think of baptism in that way. I thought of baptism as something that happened a long time ago. It’s something in the past; something to remember or, more likely, to have others remind us of. It is a passive past action. But that’s absolutely not true. It’s not passive, it’s not past; it’s active and present reality. It doesn’t just save us for some future but drowns us daily. Baptism is something that lives with us. If you have been baptized and do absolutely nothing with it then you aren’t so much a human being as a human in waiting, or if you’re treating baptism as insurance to allow you to do whatever you please, as if baptism is the one and only key to salvation, then Paul has some strong words.

He says, “You … must confess yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” You must confess you are dead to sin and alive to God…

Here’s a completely non-comprehensive list of what that means:

It means that you must be dead to hate and bigotry and any way you may try to lift yourself over another person. Rather, you must be alive to humility and seeing others as equally beautiful children of God.

It means you must be dead to narcissism. You can’t believe you are the center of universe because this God who brought you through the waters of baptism demands you see yourself not as creator but as creation. To be alive to God is to admit that I am not God, which is done daily through every action we take and every word we speak that points not to myself and how great I am but to God and how great God is.

To be dead to sin and alive to God means we stop counting the score, we stop judging whether others have done enough to please God, and instead we live out of the joy of abundance and practice gracious giving, not overly concerned about what others are doing but instead giving of ourselves more fully and loving more strongly—even if somebody might take advantage of us. We know that ultimately there is nothing we can lose that matters.

We are to be dead to sin by calling a thing what it is. Evil is evil. Good is good. And when we don’t know which is which we are to turn to God with the same humility that it takes to admit that I am not God. We are not to say “anything goes” but instead to sit in patience and prayer to discern God’s will for us.

To be dead to sin is to not trust my old self to determine right and wrong or when I am justified or not. It is not trust my own sense of what makes me righteous. It is not to trust my desire to take good things by force. It is especially not to trust that I can save the world, or that the world would be a better place if only I had more power. Instead, to be alive in God is to trust that God will take me, in all that I am and all that I am not, and make me righteous apart from what I can take and what I would accomplish if given the chance. To be alive in God is to put aside all quests for personal power; it is to give up my power for the sake of others.

There are countless examples of these things in our life.

Baptism, Repentance, and Grace

Acts 2:37-42

When a scripture reading begins with “Now when they heard this…” it sort of begs the question of what it is they heard. Like when you find “Therefore” in scripture and ask, as you should, what is the therefore there for?

            In this case the things that the people heard about were things about Jesus, specifically Acts 2:36, which reads, “Let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

            Ouch.

            Not “this Jesus, the Son of God” or “this Jesus” period, but “this Jesus, whom you crucified.” You did this, Peter says, pointing the finger at the very people who are beginning the church.

This gets at a strange tension in what it means to be a Christian. Yes, we are people who follow God, but we are also people who would probably nail our God to a cross again if we were given the chance—probably not knowing what we were doing. These people in Acts were the original big tent church, spirit-filled, Pentecostals of a sort. These, of all people, were ready to receive the body and blood of Christ in communion with the words “Given for you” or “Broken for you” or “Shed for you.” And yet, these were also the people who betrayed Jesus to be crucified. At least they were by association. To be a Christian is to be a person who is saved by Jesus even while we are people who killed Jesus in the first place. As with these people in Acts, that cuts us to the heart.

            So we repent. We ask forgiveness. Not cheap forgiveness; not “because we got caught so we sort of feel bad about it” forgiveness, but real, tough forgiveness. The kind that sits with us. This is evident enough in what Peter tells us to do: Repent, be baptized, participate in the life of discipleship through teaching and visiting and eating together and praying together. All of this happens as a gift of God who, Peter says, calls us to him. God calls us; we respond by how we live.

            This is really what the sacraments are about: God’s gifts pushing us to respond by living out of gratitude for the grace we have been given.

Active attitude, passive resistance: Putting on the armor of God

Ephesians 6:10-20

            I’ve always thought the warfare language around faith was kind of troubling. I mean, God, I hope I don’t demonstrate my faith in you by going out and slaughtering a bunch of villagers. That sounds like I’m some Viking praying to Odin, not so much a Christian. I mean, I can sort of understand the Old Testament; the rules were different then—it was about setting Israel apart, and, yes, there was a lot of killing going on there—in spite of God giving the Israelites an explicit commandment, “Thou shall not kill”—but these examples of killing tended to lift Israel over some occupying force, some people who were not where they belonged, and so while it may still make me a bit uneasy I can understand it. But, after Jesus, the warfare images feel like they maybe shouldn’t be needed. After all, we are no longer Jews or Greeks, so what on earth are we fighting about?

            Yet, the images persist, begging us to consider why. Paul, in Ephesians—in Ephesians of all places, where he has spent pretty much the entirety of his letter talking about unity in and through faith—writes about putting on the armor of God because of the threats to the people from the ruling authorities. This sounds like it might be the pregame pep talk leading to war. This has been used by Christians during the Crusades and the Inquisition, where putting on the armor of God has meant converting the savages by means of a sword. Something about that doesn’t feel right. If someone came to ransack our town and told us to convert or die we would (I think rightly) assume that their faith is pretty weak if it takes threats of violence to achieve conversion.

            So, it seems like we might be heading that direction. Paul takes us to the precipice of where we have been before—war, death, destruction—it’s the old ways again, time to pick up our swords or grab our guns and head to battle, but that’s where things change. It’s precisely at this point where we discover the change in what it means to be a God-follower after Jesus. Yes, we put on the armor of God but the armor of God is not battle armor. Rather, Paul says it is the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, and shoes to proclaim the gospel of peace. Paul’s message is particularly effective because he leads us down one avenue—war, battle, man-things—and takes us on a sharp left turn toward something different, a saving grace that requires us not to fight for our lives but to give our lives away. This is the stunning left turn of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

            But, if I’m being honest, this is kind of a tough turn to make, especially for men. Many men are excited to throw on the armor. And here I want to draw a quick distinction between joining the military, which at its best is about serving for peace at home, and going on a personal war, which is about achieving our own ends. Paul wasn’t writing against the choice to defend your country—after all, the people to whom he was writing were under foreign rule already, rather he was taking a certain attitude that tries to achieve its ends through violence and turning it around.

Now, we don’t go to battle as much these days. We certainly don’t do religious wars so much anymore, which is I believe very much for the best. But instead we throw on our Vikings horns or cheese heads or Sioux and/or Fighting Hawks jerseys or smiling Golden Gophers shirts—because nothing so terrifies the enemy as a brick of cheese or a grinning rodent—and then we go and cheer on our team. Or we throw on the armor in other kinds of competition. We throw on the armor of a business suit and make cunning deals and take home lots of money. We put on the metaphorical armor of parents and we defend our families. One of the reasons I find that men do not connect so much with the church these days is because there is sometimes very little here that feeds that sense of going to battle for something. The church may feel passive because we are preaching a grace given to you, for you, and there’s nothing for you to do about it. There’s nothing to seize; no dragon to conquer that isn’t beaten for you. Some of us are like those knights in medieval stories who apparently go kingdom to kingdom looking for a troll or dragon or monster of various size and strength to slay. It’s their purpose.

            Some people just need to battle. But this is where we tend to misunderstand the role of faith, because there are things worth fighting for. Putting on the armor of God is not a violent exercise but it is not a passive one either. Instead, it is living a life worthy of the Gospel to which you have been called. There is a response to grace and that is in how we live. It is what we do with those shoes we put on that are supposed to be bringing peace. It is the work we do—fighting for our families, our communities, our selves. We do this not primarily against antagonistic regimes—I feel like many Christians are walking around looking for a made-up enemy to fight and so they go to battle against the “the culture” or “the world” or worse yet a particular subset of people they imagine to be the enemy—no, most of the time we aren’t fighting anything but ourselves and the power of sin over us.

            The thing we should realize—that is so hard to realize in the moment—is that most of the fights we fight against sin are not fights at all. We don’t wage war on cancer—cancer is part of us. We don’t battle depression—depression is woven into us. We don’t go to war with grief—grief is the product of love, which is the very thing we are fighting for. Often what we need is an active attitude that accepts a passive resistance. Accepting that I cannot fix a thing is the hardest thing to do, but it is very close to what putting on God’s armor is about—it’s remembering that I am not the one I am fighting for.

            But many of us are only happy trying to fix things. If there’s nothing to fix we feel we are lacking a purpose. So, when some tragedy strikes we try to fix it. When others are sick we try to fix it. When something we cannot repair gets broken we obsess over trying to fix it even when it cannot be done. A relationship is not a pipe. A human body is not a car. So, to put on God’s armor is a reminder of our vulnerability, and it’s an acceptance of the things I cannot change, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t good. That doesn’t mean—just because we admit that we can’t do it all—that there aren’t things worth doing. And that’s where I worry that we lose men in the church, because just because you can’t fix everything—and you have to rely on a higher power to save you and the people you love—doesn’t mean that you can’t be the hands and feet of Jesus. In fact it means you have a real duty to do it. We all do.

            So let’s put on the armor of God for the right reasons. To do good for the world. To be little Christs. Then, let’s accept we can’t do all the good we would like. So, we remember what we are fighting for—not our strength but the strength of God through us.

Beating the "Yeah, buts...": A brief word on unity

Ephesians 4:1-16

There is one body, one Spirit, one calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all… yeah, but…

            Isn’t that always the response: Yeah, but…

            Maybe you’ve seen that meme of Jesus preaching the Sermon on the Mount, saying “Love one another as I have loved you” and the people saying, “Yeah, but…” What if… what if people aren’t worthy… what if they make poor choices… and Jesus says, “Did I stutter? I’ll start over and let me know where I lose you.” Love one another.

            In Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus, this book we have called Ephesians, every chapter it seems is on unity. Be unified. Don’t divide. Don’t break apart. There is only one Spirit, one God, one baptism, etc, etc, so you need not be divided by anything.

            “Yeah, but…” the people say.

            Yeah, but what if they are Republicans and I’m a Democrat?

            Yeah, but what if they believe in infant baptism and I believe you have to choose to be baptized?

            Yeah, but what if we believe differently about homosexuality?

            Yeah, but what if we believe differently about women serving in leadership in the church?

            Yeah, but what if we have different practices around communion?

            Yeah, but what if we come from different ethnicities and have different cultural practices in our church?

            Yeah, but what if…

            I could go on and on, maybe I should. Yeah, but what if other people would want us to change who we are. Yeah, but what if they won’t get along with us.

            The great thing about Paul is that he has no time at all for the “yeah, buts.” He just tells the people that there is one God, one Spirit, one Lord, one baptism. That’s it.

Grace is Offensive

Ephesians 2:1-22

The Gospel of the Lord! Ephesians 2. Wow. I love this passage.

“We were once children of wrath,” writes Paul, but “God made us alive together with Christ.” BY GRACE WE HAVE BEEN SAVED. AND IT IS NOT YOUR OWN DOING BUT IT IS BY THE GRACE OF GOD. Period. Full stop. You were children of wrath but God has saved you by God’s grace. You were dead but now you are alive. And it is not by your works, your effort, your prayers, your trying or your doing; it is not because you’re awesome or even because you’re just “not terrible,” but it is God’s grace that resurrects you—that makes you rise from the ashes of all that separates you from God and from your fellow human beings. Because of this, Paul tells us that we are created in Christ Jesus for good works, so that while our works do not save us we were nevertheless created to be and do good—to be little Christs to the world. This is the best of all worlds: We are saved by grace so that we need not feel the burden of sin, wondering if we are OK after all, because Christ has given us that promise that there is nothing that can separate us from his love—not least anything we can do to ruin it. Then, because we are always wondering what then, Christ turns around and says, “Since you are saved by grace… since you have this promise that you are a resurrected phoenix of a human being… now you are created to do good for the world. Now, you are disciples. So go out and make the world a better place!”